Between Two Fires REVISITED
by Raven Catz
Summary: When disaster leaves one woman's life in ashes, what happens when she finds herself caught between two fires?  I have been toying with rewriting this story for years, this is the result.
1. Chapter 1

I lay in bed, staring up through the darkness. Crumbly, popcorn-ceiling tiles stared back, echoing my emotionless gaze. I realized dimly that I should be sleeping, but I just couldn't seem to close my eyes. I had to work in the morning. It was going to be my first day back, and I needed the money now, more than ever.

Barely a week ago, I had found myself flung from the comfortable life I knew, hurled into the night with nothing but the clothes on my back and my 15 year old sister. It had started like any other night. I crawled home from my painfully arbitrary part-time job at the mall, wearily sat down to another dinner at the family dinner table. I remember complaining about being sick of everything my mother made for dinner. How the span of one night can change things. I would kill to taste her cooking just one more time.

I slunk off to bed far too early that night. I thought I might get some reading done, but I felt too apathetic to read, so I simply allowed myself to drift off. I don't even think I said goodnight to my father.

When I woke initially, I thought it was because I had caught a chill. Sleeping in a basement bedroom meant that I usually woke up freezing at some point in the night. To my horror, I realized that I had awoken to a haze of smoke drifting lazily down the stairs, and just beginning to curl into my room proper. An eerie red glow flickered from the top of the stairwell, and I was suddenly aware of a great creaking and groaning as the house above me was slowly consumed. Grabbing my blanket, I scrambled through the window above my bed and made a break for the street. Surely my family would be waiting for me there.

I stood in the street, solitary and alert, all my nerves spinning and firing. Where were they? Flames were shooting out a second-story window. My father's office. My sister's bedroom was pouring smoke. Sirens were wailing in the distance, but I wanted to tell them, shut up, it's too late. I had torn a hole in the knee of my acid-wash jeans. Why do I remember that? I was panicked, but paralyzed. Rooted in the street with legs like lead. Why hadn't the smoke alarms gone off? Didn't daddy test them, just like you're supposed to?

It was at that moment that my sister came riding up the street, mouth agape. As she pulled up alongside me, I turned dumbly to her. I stared at her uncomprehendingly.

"Where's mom?" She asked.

I was seized simultaneously with the urge to both throttle her and smother her in the tightest embrace I could. She had snuck out that night to smoke cigarettes at the corner 7-11 with her friends. My sister, whom I assumed was a charred wreck along with the rest of my life, was now standing next to me, fishing her lighter from her pocket. I was incredulous.

"Where do you think?" I mumbled, numbly.

It was at that moment that the fire trucks rounded the corner. Amidst the swirling lights, I swore I saw something akin to camera flash come from some place not far down the street, but my mind was beginning to collapse on itself, and things started to get hazy. I remember throwing a corner of my blanket around my sister's shoulders, and we stood there together, uncomprehending, as the roof caved in, and with it, any chance of returning to our safe, normal life.

Once the paperwork was processed and the smoldering wreck of our lives had been rendered an inert pile of ash, the question became what to do with the orphan sisters? I, as I have said, am 25, an adult, albeit a waste of one. But my sister was still a minor. We had no relations in California, just ourselves and each other, and I realized, sickeningly, that just as the fire had deprived me of my parents, the department of social services could easily deprive me of my sister. Fortunately, the caseworker decided to give me the benefit of the doubt. I would have one week's grace period, and then a month to find us a stable place to live. In the meantime, we were shunted off to the nearest facility that could hold us; a small hostel run by the Challenger's Boys and Girls club.

At 25, I would easily be the oldest and most responsible tenant in a collective of runaways, homeless teens, and recovering gang members. At 15, my sister would be impressionable, grieving, and angry. And I was overcome with the most powerful desire to shield her from it all. So here I was, at the end of my week, realizing that it was no more effective in dulling my pain than raindrops can dull a razor, knowing that tomorrow, I would have to get up and leave her to her own devices.

* * *

><p>Phoenix Jackson had hated her job before the fire. And now that she needed it, needed every cent she could scrape, she loathed it. To add insult to injury, the donated clothing from the Challenger's Center had not quite stood up to her employer's brand-centric dress code, and she found herself grudgingly handing over the money she would have used for lunch in order to slide into a nicer pair of jeans.<p>

"All this to fold clothes for eight hours?" She sighed, fidgeting with her long red hair. Her thoughts drifted as she dug into a pile of sweaters left in shambles by the 14-year-old delinquents now loitering just outside the door. She moved mechanically, flipping one sleeve in, then the second, smoothed out the creases, and stacked them back in a pile. Her thoughts were drifting to Robin, her sister. The fire had come just before spring break, and Robin still had three days before returning to school. It was agony for Phoenix to think of leaving her sister alone at the Challenger's club all day.

Not that Phoenix thought for an instant that Robin would actually stay indoors all day. No, Robin usually escaped on her bike, to freedom, her friends, and the questionable distractions of the life of a high-school girl. Still… Phoenix knew that her sister wasn't the typical high-school kid The Breakfast Club would have had you believe. She had friends, but not a best-friend. Lots of kids liked her, but she was quiet. She didn't have a boyfriend. Phoenix wondered how she would cope without having someone close to talk to .

Phoenix herself was somewhat of a loner. She didn't have a lot of friends left in L.A. Most of them had gone off after college, to bigger and better things. A strange mix of pride and shame kept Phoenix pushing them away, ignoring their letters. She, though, wasn't worried about coping on her own. She was too familiar with the feeling.

By the time her eight hours had passed, Phoenix was exhausted. She slunk to the bus stop, dropped her quarters into the basket, and started the journey home.

* * *

><p>To say that I was astonished at what I found upon returning to the Challenger's Center would be an understatement. I expected to find my sister just loping up the drive, same as myself, her trusty bike in tow. I expected her to be hastily stashing her cigarettes in the pocket of her denim jacket, hoping the staff wouldn't notice she'd been smoking. She knew better than to hide them from me, I had always known about her questionable habits. I… I'm not sure entirely what I had expected, I suppose, but it surely was not what I found.<p>

I dumped out the contents of my pockets on the creaky bed in my room, then hastily shut the door and made my way down the hall to where Robin had been put up. Robin was sharing a room with two other girls, so I knocked. It was silent for a moment, and I thought perhaps that the three of them were all out somewhere, not unusual considering the time of day and the weather. But then the door handle clicked, and the door swung open, and my heart felt that heavy lurch that only happens when the hand of fate is steering and you're just along for the ride.

The man on the other side of the door was not tall. In fact, I could look him almost square in the eye. His hair was a little long, but carefully arranged, and his eyes were dark, strangely dark and hollow, and at the moment, they wore an expression equally as astonished as my own.

"You're the sister, I presume?" I noted when he spoke, he held his whole face with a peculiar sort of control, all the while those strange eyes smoldering. His whole being radiated an air of something completely, overwhelmingly uncontrollable, wrapped in a gauze of inhibition.

"You're… not from around here." I said lamely. "Who are you?"

"Come in."

"Look, I'd love to keep playing the 'let's-not-answer-each-other's questions' game, but…"

"I said come in." The words held dangerous weight, but his face had been arranged in something resembling imploring. He stepped aside as I entered Robin's room, and I took a seat on the edge of the bed. Robin looked at me, a little guiltily.

"You mad at me?" She asked quietly.

"Not yet." I said, forcing a smile.

"You were gone all day, I needed someone to talk to."

The stranger in the doorway wheeled around, pulling one of the rickety looking chairs from against the wall, and seating himself, appraising the two of us. At length, he held out his hand to me. I took it, expecting a handshake.

Instead, he raised it to those strange, tense lips, and kissed my knuckles, like some sort of medieval heroine.

"It is a pleasure. Your sister speaks very kindly of you." He said, releasing my hand. I withdrew quickly, unaccustomed.

"My name is Murdoc, and it seems I've stumbled into your lives at the most inopportune of moments." His carefully metered speech betrayed some sort of higher-class, and he was dressed well, if not a little shabbily.

He went on to tell me that he had sat with my sister for the better part of the day, while she poured out all the horror of our past week, letting it spill into his life, and positively _sweeping him away_. I listened to him as he began weaving some tale of how he once had a family of his own, a lovely, redheaded wife, he said, looking at me so strangely with those dark eyes. A redheaded wife, and a beautiful daughter, who had barely turned 12 when it happened. They were missionaries, he said, in some unpronounceable country in the far East. The convent they had been staying at had been burned to the ground by Communists, and with it, his _beautiful, redheaded wife_, and his daughter, and his life. As he continued on, I was dimly aware of my sister fishing through her pockets for a tissue. I, on the other hand, was not crying. I was attempting to arrange my face into something resembling empathy, but I was registering nothing. He was lying, I could see it in those empty eyes.

Eventually, however, he took his leave of us, disappearing down the hall with a strange, affected fluidity, liquid and feline, but with a tiny hitch. An artifact from barely making it out of Asia alive, he said. I turned to my sister.

"You won't chase him off?" She asked me, still rumpling a tissue in her hands. I sighed.

"I don't trust him, Robin."

"You don't trust anyone." She murmured. "He's not going to hurt me, he was here all day with me, and all we did was talk."

"It's not you I'm worried about." I said, cryptically. I didn't give her the chance to ask more.

"We'll be late for dinner. Come on."


	2. Chapter 2

The days began to crawl by, one by one, and slowly, Robin and I began to settle in to our new life. I found I was having an increasingly difficult time sleeping, due to the nightmares that came more and more frequently. My whole world was on fire. I could feel it in my lungs, I could taste it in the air. Something, not just the fire itself, had triggered this.

It was Murdoc. Nearly every day, he came around, sometimes bringing the welcome relief of takeout hamburgers, sometimes just hovering uncomfortably around my sister and I. I was conflicted. Whenever he was with my sister, he was marvelous. She was social and engaging, instead of moody and sullen. When he would bring us dinner, she would eat, instead of just pushing things around on her plate. When he was around, I could tell that she was able to process her feelings in a much more constructive way.

But when he was around me, I was terrified. When he looked at me, I saw fire in his eyes. His whole being smoldered with it. And when he looked at me, I had the strangest sensation of being burned alive, all my impurities burning away, and being completely exposed, uncomfortable, and alone. I had scrambled out of one fire, only to be thrust into another.

To make things worse, my hours had been cut at work. Which left me more time to either hide in my room alone, or deal with the uncomfortable gaze of our new friend. My manager was not happy with the consistent lack of fashionable work-wear, and despite my consistent reminders that I had _lost everything I owned_, I was reminded time and again, to shape up or prepare for the worst. I was juggling phone calls with my father's lawyer and the insurance company, trying to put together what money I did have access to, so I could find a place for my sister and I, and I was quickly drowning in the sea of adult responsibility that had washed over me. At least when I was busy drowning, I didn't feel like I was burning…

Finally, nearly two weeks after this whole nightmare had begun, I rode the bus all the way in to work one morning, only to be sent home, kaput, end of story. I was seized by a sudden panic. What if I couldn't find another job? What if I couldn't get us an apartment? What if the state took my sister from me, and worse, what if MURDOC rescued her from the state? Suddenly, sitting on the crowded bus, I burst into tears. And I didn't stop until I was back at the Challenger's Center, and curled up in one of the overstuffed chairs in their media room.

To call it a media room was really kind of ridiculous, as it was really more like a media closet. A tiny room with two ragged chairs stuffed inside, a pair of turntables, and a lone tape deck, along with a laughably small collection of incredibly outdated records. I had taken to hiding in this room whenever Murdoc came around. I had never seen anyone else in this room, and I was beginning to wonder if, in fact, everyone else had just forgotten about its existence.

So here I was, at the absolute end of my rope, too overwhelmed to pick up a copy of the morning news, too tearstained and ragged to go knocking on doors, with nothing but my sense of urgency, my sister, and the uncomfortable gaze of our new friend to console me. I tried to play the Jackson Five record I had found hiding at the bottom of the bin, but its hissing skips jarred my nerves more than the silence and my own thoughts could. So I closed my eyes and allowed apathetic sleep to take me instead.

I was jolted awake by the sound of the doorknob rattling. I peered through the tiny square window, heart racing, only to find a man outside the door juggling two massive, overstuffed milk-crates. I opened the door, and he tumbled in, swaying. I rushed to rescue one of the crates from his arms.

"Thanks." The stranger said, flashing a relieved smile.

"No problem." I replied, hefting the crate down onto one of the chairs. "What is all this?"

"My local library is updating their collection to cassette tapes and CD's. I thought you all could use these." He set his own crate on the other chair, and brushed a stray hair from his face. "The name's MacGyver. I don't think I've seen you here before."

"My sister and I are here until—until I can find a new job…" I said, voice dropping.

"I'm sorry to hear that." MacGyver said, fishing through his crate of records.

"Do you want me to lend you a hand?" I asked. "Oh, and my name is Phoenix. Phoenix Jackson." I held out my hand.

"Phoenix…" MacGyver smiled, shaking my hand warmly.

"What's so funny?" I asked.

"Oh… nothing. I, uh… I work for an organization called the Phoenix Foundation. Kind of an unusual coincidence, you think?"

I smiled too.

"Yeah."

He began sifting through the crates of records, pulling out a few. I watched quizzically for a moment, and he looked up and handed me the stack.

"That should do."

"Um… do for what, if I may ask?"

He didn't reply, but instead pulled a nearly-empty roll of duct tape from the pocket of his faded bomber jacket and snagged the top record sleeve off the pile.

"These are duplicates, and in pretty iffy shape, if you ask me. How 'bout we put them on the walls instead? Place could use a little color."

One by one, I handed him the dog-eared record sleeves. The Bee-Gees, Billy Joel, Jefferson Airplane. At the bottom of the stack was a copy of The Moody Blues _The Present._ MacGyver looked at the walls for a moment, then handed this one back to me.

"Must've miscalculated the amount of space we had." He said, smiling in a way that said very clearly that he had not miscalculated anything. "Why don't you take this one back to your room? I'm sure you could use a little color too."

"Hey, thanks. That's the first good thing to happen in a while." I smiled.

"And good luck with the job search. I'm sure I'll see you around, I'm here all the time."

When he left the room, I was conscious of the fact that, for the first time since our lives had been dumped upside down, I felt like things might actually return to some sense of normal. People would still be kind, without being pitying. I would continue to have good days and bad days, and not everything was going to smolder away to nothing.

When I got back to my room, I stood in the center for a moment, trying to figure out where I should put the record sleeve. The room was tiny and dingy, with bare walls save for a faded print of a vase of flowers. I settled on a patch of bare wall next to the door. That way, no matter what came in through that door tomorrow, there would always be the tiniest bit of beauty to distract me.

* * *

><p>It would be another panic-filled week before Phoenix ran into MacGyver again. Instead of a bus to work, she spent her mornings scouring the local papers for want ads, and her afternoons trekking to all the local businesses, resume in hand.<p>

On the upside, she had not had to deal with Murdoc for a few days. He had gone away, leaving Phoenix and Robin to their own devices. Robin became moody and sullen, and Phoenix breathed a sigh of relief. Robin insisted that she was being unfair in her appraisal of Murdoc, and Phoenix had begun to wonder if she was crazy after all. The feeling she got when he was around, she couldn't put her finger on why he made her so uncomfortable. He wasn't overt, he wasn't awkward, far from it. But the way his eyes lingered on her face just a millisecond too long, and the way he carried himself, like a panther all wound up and ready to spring made her spine crawl every time he showed up.

In any case, it had been several days, and though Phoenix knew that finding a new job would take time, she wasn't prepared for the amount of stress she would be buried under during the entire process. Once again, she found herself in the media room, reduced to tears.

Once again, she was startled by a knock at the door. Desperately dabbing at puffy red eyes, she sighed and allowed the door to swing open. To her mingled relief and horror, it was MacGyver.

"I thought I might find you—what happened?" He asked, cocking his head to one side.

"I… nothing." She began fidgeting with her hair.

"Doesn't look like nothing to me." He said, then gestured to the door. "Wanna talk to someone? Promise I'll listen."

"I said I'll be fine." Phoenix replied, a little more shortly than she had intended.

"Come on." He wheedled. "You've been trying to hold everything and everyone together since you got here, and no one is an island. Maybe I can help."

At length, she consented, and he held the door as she sulked out. She soon found the two of them wandering down the street, cars rumbling past.

"So what's eating at ya?" He asked.

"I… I'm afraid I'm not going to find a job, and then they're going to take my sister away from me." It came out in a rush.

"That's… heavy. Let's start at the beginning."

The story poured out of her. The fire, the loss of her last job, everything. She hesitated a moment, before hastily omitting any mention of Murdoc. She felt a twinge of embarrassment at feeling so unsettled by someone who just seemed to want to help them. She felt it was better to leave it out entirely. MacGyver listened, quietly.

"And so… if I don't find us a place to stay and a steady job in two weeks… I'm not sure what's going to happen to Robin…" She finished, suddenly becoming incredibly self-conscious. "I'm sorry. You shouldn't have to listen to all this…"

"I asked." Mac said with a smile. "I wouldn' t have asked if I wasn't willing to get involved."

The two of them walked in silence for a short while, as Phoenix digested the weight of everything that had flooded out of her brain. On one hand, she felt better. It felt good to have someone, even a relative stranger, listen to her story. On the other hand, she was filling slowly with instinctive guilt. What if he laughed away her problems? What if he thought she was whining? What if he thought she was _always_ this whiny? Oh god…

"Listen." His voice broke through her panicked inner monologue. "I might be able to help you out. But I'm going to have to make a phone call first. You want to grab some lunch? My treat."

"I…" Phoenix began lamely.

"I'll take that as a yes. What are you in the mood for?"

"Chinese?"

"Chinese it is. I know a great little place not far from here."

Soon, Phoenix found herself drowning her sorrows in a plate of lo mein. It had been so long since she had been able to really sit down and enjoy a meal. While she fidgeted with her chopsticks, MacGyver excused himself to the pay phone around the corner. Phoenix began to wonder what this was all about. He said he was going to help her? How could he help her? Unless there was someone standing next to that pay phone with a salaried job offer and a vacant apartment, Phoenix doubted very much that anything he could do would be of much help to her.

But when he came back, he was suppressing a small smile. Phoenix looked up expectantly, but he just sat down in silence and began tucking in to his cashew chicken.

"Well?" Phoenix asked.

"This might be my favorite cashew chicken anywhere." MacGyver replied, cryptically.

"That's not what I was asking."

"You? How's the lo mein?"

"It's fine. What did they say?"

"They?"

"Whoever you were on the phone with. What did they say? About me?"

"They said you should enjoy that lo mein before it gets cold." Mac grinned, deftly picking up a cashew between his chopsticks and lobbing it at Phoenix's plate.

"Seriously."

"I am being serious."

"I can't eat when I'm nervous. Just tell me."

"…Fine. Do you want to order something to take back to your sister?"

"MacGyver!"

"Ok! I was on the phone with my boss, a guy by the name of Pete Thornton. I asked him if they might have a position for you in our office. "

"…And?"

"And… as long as you don't mind doing the paperwork I hate dealing with, you might have just found yourself a job. At least for now."

Phoenix dropped her chopsticks. They clattered onto her plate as a broad grin spread across her face.

"You mean it?"

"Yeah. It's just temporary for now. I don't suppose you've got any business casual in that closet of yours?"

"Oh." Her face fell a little.

"Neither do I." Mac said. "But you'll need it. I can give you a list of thrift places in the neighborhood. You should take your sister, I'm sure she'd like to spend more time with you."

"Thank you. I mean, really. Thank you."

"No problem. You can be ready by Monday?"

"Monday." Phoenix said with a nod.

* * *

><p>I found the haze of stress and sorrow lifting from me as MacGyver walked me back to the Challenger's Center. Outside the front doors, he hung back slightly, beckoning toward an old open-top Jeep. I stopped.<br>"I've got to be getting back." He said with a smile.

"I… I really can't thank you enough." I began. I wasn't quite sure where I was going to go from there, except to start awkwardly gushing my gratitude again. On impulse, I flung my arms around his neck. He stumbled backwards just a bit, and I pulled away, viciously red in the face.

"It's no problem. I've been looking for an excuse to not have to deal with all those files for months. It's me who should be thanking you."

"Well, and… thank you for lunch. It was nice to kind of step out of my life for a little while."

"My pleasure." He replied, dark eyes sparkling. "You'll let me take you out again sometime?"

"Sure. You pick next time."

"Deal." He said, climbing into the Jeep.

I watched him reverse out of the lot and drive away down the street, completely unaware that I was staring after him long after I'd lost him in the haze of traffic. When I snapped back to reality, I scolded myself silently. He was, after all, going to be my employer in a matter of days.

This man, this _MacGyver_, why hadn't it been he that found my sister while I was folding miserable sweaters that first day back at work? He was the polar opposite of what Murdoc was. Where Murdoc carried himself like a cat, fluid with muscles tensed and ready, MacGyver sort of loped along, relaxed and open. His manner and speech were kind and sincere. And as much as I found myself inexplicably repelled by Murdoc, I was equally as drawn to MacGyver.

I had never really… felt like that before. I mean, I had been interested in people before. And I had had boyfriends before. Not to say that I was appraising this man for anything of that sort. But maybe that was the difference. I felt able to peacefully coexist with this individual, without thinking about pushing my own agenda, or worrying he might be doing the same. Besides, I thought, he's at least ten years older than I am, what use would anyone have for a child like me?

Packing these thoughts away, I stepped in through the front door just in time to see Murdoc rumpling my sister's hair and turning to leave himself. His eyes fell on me, and I watched his face pass, as it always did, through a strange sort of startled expression as it worked to arrange itself into something passive. All the wonderful feelings that had been bubbling up inside me at the thought of a new job and a new life sank like stones into the pit of my stomach. His tense mouth twitched into a smile.

"Phoenix." He greeted me, as always, in a voice pitched just a few decibels too low to be appropriate for everyday conversation. He always spoke to me as if he were about to reveal some sort of delicious secret only I should be privy to.

"You're back." I said simply.

"Of course. I wouldn't dare abandon your sister." He said, thrusting his thumbs into jean pockets. "She says you hover too much."

"Mom used to do that to me…" It tumbled out of me before I could stop it.

"She's worried about you." He said.

"SHE'S worried about ME?" I asked, incredulously.

"…And frankly, I am too. She says you don't have many friends…"

"I have PLENTY of friends, thanks. Just because they're in different states…"

"You need someone here. Someone you can talk to. I'd be happy to listen." He was surprisingly persuasive when he really wanted to be.

"I… don't know…"

"Listen, Phoenix. I know how you feel. Why would you want to trust a stranger, someone you've only barely met?" He stopped me from advancing down the hall, stood in front of me, dark eyes full of a pleading that, for once, I wasn't sure was disingenuous. "You're a lovely young woman, and I hate to watch this process crushing you."

I thought about sidestepping him, but my sister was _right there_, and I knew she wouldn't be pleased if I was quite that rude, so I sighed defeatedly.

"What did you have in mind?" I asked.

"I think it would be beneficial for you to have some time to be selfish. I'd like to take you out. Your sister can take care of herself, she's a smart, resourceful girl."

"I…" I began

"I know you've been very busy, Robin has told me all about what you've been having to go through. But I think it would be good for you to get your nose out of the want- ads for a little while. Tomorrow evening?"

"I…"

"I'd just like to afford you the chance to get to know me a little better. I assure you, I'm completely harmless." He smiled, an unsettling expression for his face.

"Tomorrow evening?" I asked.

"Let's make it six."

And then, with a barely perceptible nod to me, he was slinking out the front door. I was suddenly conscious of how tense I had become in his presence, and allowed my muscles to relax.

"Are you mad at me?" Robin asked, pulling a stick of gum from her pocket and popping it into her mouth.

"Why do you keep asking me that? You're fifteen, and I'm not mom." I snapped.

"Jesus. Ok. I just thought you might want someone to talk to." She rolled her eyes.

"Gum?" I declined, trying to be as polite as I could.

"Look. I know you don't like strangers. And I know you think he's creepy or whatever. But he's been really nice to me, and I think you should give the guy a chance."

"I don't like the way he looks at me." Was all I could say.

"So he looks at you. You're pretty, Phoenix, lots of people look at you. Don't tell me you don't notice."

"You don't think that's creepy?"

"Why?"

"Well… isn't he, like, forty?"

"Jesus, Phoenix, you're not me. Look, if I was you, I'd be all over it. How's that for creepy?" Robin smiled. I cracked, despite myself, a small grin myself.

"You're right. That is creepy." I smiled.


	3. Chapter 3

Robin and I spent part of the evening watching old movies with some of the other kids, but I found myself growing tired very quickly. I realized I hadn't broken the good news to Robin yet, but I figured it could wait 'til morning. I had to give her credit, Robin was surprisingly functional, even now, in ways I never had been. She sat crosslegged, couch pillow in her lap, between the two girls she shared a room with, giggling and pushing, and generally behaving like a normal 15 year old girl. I sat at her feet, largely silent.

It wasn't just that I was getting tired. I hadn't really had the opportunity to examine the day's events yet. I wanted to feel everything out, figure out just what it was that was blocking me from accepting someone that my sister was so comfortable with.

I had always been the shy sister. I had never been at a loss for friends, but I wasn't terribly close to anyone. I never really had been. I floated through high school and then college, letting people drift into my life, and then drift away just as easily. I never thought that was terribly odd, until I realized that Robin was so different from me. She did have friends, a very strong core of them. They had grown up together. And she was very good at integrating new people into her circle, making them feel just as welcome and valued as those who had been there since the beginning. I never had quite that kind of talent, maybe that's why I just floated through social circles. Easier to be the go-between than to have to manage one of my own.

So then I began to examine just what it was that made me so uncomfortable about Murdoc. And I came up empty. It wasn't a feeling I could pin down easily. He made me ill at ease, in a way that was different from normal strangers when they suddenly become a part of your life. And, to top it off, wasn't MacGyver just as much of a stranger, if not more so? I had only met him a week ago, after all, and it had been no problem for me to just offload my whole bag of issues at his feet.

I guessed that it all came down to the differences I had noted earlier between the two. The way they carried themselves. The way they each spoke. Murdoc was not an unattractive gentleman himself, if I had to admit it. Robin was right in her assessment. But that didn't _mean_ anything. One can be devastatingly handsome and still be creepy, or socially inept, or rude. And let us not forget that that pleasant-ish face holds those creepy, hollow eyes.

But the moment of introspection was just enough to temporarily confuse me. Perhaps, just this once, I'd try to give him the benefit of the doubt. Even if his eyes did linger just a millisecond too long on a girl with wild red hair and shredded, acid-wash jeans.

* * *

><p>The next morning, Phoenix awoke with a start. She suddenly remembered she would have to find clothes for her first day on the job. She dashed to the room Robin shared with her two new friends, and rattled the door handle.<p>

A groggy Robin answered the door, running a hand through her short, ruddy hair. Phoenix burst into the room and began rifling through a drawer, handing her sister a t-shirt and faded jeans.

"What're you doing?" Robin asked. Phoenix pulled the pack of cigarettes she had hidden in her drawer out, and shoved them in the pocket of her denim jacket.

"Hey!" Robin insisted. "…how did you know about them?"

"I've lived with you for fifteen years. Don't tell me you thought you'd hidden them from me too?" Phoenix smiled. "It's fine. I mean… it'll kill you eventually. But you can do whatever you want. It's your life."

"Thanks, _mom._"

The sisters paused for a moment, sobered. Then Phoenix shoved Robin's ragged sneakers at her, and flopped onto the bed, tapping her fingers impatiently on the bedframe.

"Seriously, what's the rush?"

"You want to go shopping?" Phoenix asked, enticingly.

"Um, yes. These jeans were made for a twelve-year-old boy."

"I can't buy you a lot. But I have to get nice clothes. For work."

"You got a job? Like… a _job _job?" Robin asked.

"Yeah. What, you didn't think I was capable of finding a real job?"

"Well, that was fast."

"I know a guy." Phoenix smiled.

"_You_ know a guy, and he just handed you a _job?_"

"And here you thought I didn't have any friends." Phoenix smirked.

"I guess." Robin was lacing up her high-tops.

And then Phoenix was pulling her out the door. Scanning the list MacGyver had scrawled for her on the back of a napkin, she stood staring at the street for a moment, and then began striding in one direction.

Two hours and seventeen-dollars-and-twenty-eight-cents later, the pair returned to the Challenger's Center, laden with bags.

"I cannot believe you spent a quarter of my money on one pair of designer jeans." Phoenix said, throwing her sister a look.

"I cannot believe you got all those ugly shirts for two-fifty." Robin retorted.

"They're not ugly, they're…"

"Ugly."

"I was going to say 'conservative.'" Phoenix said. "Besides, I have to have a whole week's worth of clothes. I can't do laundry every two days."

"You could just wear the same thing. No one's going to notice. Didn't you say this place is supposed to be kind of big?"

"And now I know why YOU don't have a job yet…" Phoenix grinned.

"_I_ don't have a job yet because I have to concentrate on my studies so I can get into a good college, so I don't end up like you." Robin grinned wickedly. Phoenix was not amused. Quietly, she broke off and opened the door to her room.

"Hey, I didn't mean it like that. I mean… " Robin protested.

"It's ok. It's true." Phoenix sighed. "Listen. Tonight's _the night_, I guess. So I guess I'm going to try and not look like a total slob. But just because I'm trying to be nice. For you. Because if it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be touching this guy with a ten-foot pole, ok?"

"You keep saying that, but you're the one with a bag full of make-up."

"That's for work!" Phoenix insisted.

"Sure. Mm-hmm. 'for work.' I'm sure." Robin smiled. "Hey, can I borrow some of that sometime? I met this guy right before spring break. I wanna look nice when I get back to school on Monday."

"I guess. Now can I go? I want to throw up far enough in advance that he won't notice, but not so far in advance that I'll be tempted to do so again when he gets here."

"Grody."

Phoenix didn't wait for an actual response.

She found herself nervous, which wasn't unexpected. It was _why_ she was nervous that was unexpected. She suddenly found herself wanting to make a good impression, which was incredulous. As if she wanted him to insist on spending even more time with her. In truth, the vast majority of her just wanted to get this evening over with. But a tiny, almost imperceptible part was very concerned about what would happen if she had been wrong.

When he came to collect her that afternoon, he did not simply come in as he usually did. Instead, he rang the front desk, as if she were a VIP in some sort of fancy hotel, instead of a vagabond in a spartan hostel. Phoenix was perplexed. This was, after all, supposed to be a casual encounter, was it not? She tottered to the front desk on a pair of low heels, hoping no one would see how scuffed they were. There he was, looking much the same as he ever did. Again with that expression, as if he were somehow caught off guard by her very presence. Again with the careful arrangement of features.

"You look…" He began.

"I got new clothes." She interrupted quickly. "For work."

"You found a new job?" He asked.

"Yes, I… Yes. A real job, for once." She thought it better to not mention that she was, in fact, capable of making friends. She just wanted to go and get this whole bit over with.

"Your sister has been worried about you." He said, leading her to a cab waiting in the street. "She says you're usually alone. It's not good to be alone all the time."

Phoenix stumbled into the cab, the tiny heels still foreign to her. Murdoc shut the door, and climbed in the opposite side. It occurred to Phoenix that she hadn't ridden in a cab in at least a year.

"Where are we headed?" She asked.

"Somewhere we'll be able to talk." He said, flashing what she assumed was trying to be a disarming smile. It was strange how little a smile suited his brooding face.

They ended up in the smoky darkness of a quiet café a few miles away. Phoenix had never been in this part of town, and she was ashamed to realize that that made her nervous. Not because she had never been there before, but because she wasn't exactly sure how she would get back home in the event that she had to make some sort of quick getaway. Somewhere inside, she knew this was a ridiculous notion, but it popped up anyway, and refused to abate.

She sat, picking at a spinach pie and sipping tea, attempting to make something other than awkward small-talk with the man across from her.

"Phoenix, I won't pretend I know anything about psychology, but I do worry that your withdrawal is not a healthy one. Your sister tells me you've gone to great lengths to avoid social interaction."

"I just like taking time for myself. She worries about me too much. She's fifteen, and everything is a huge deal to her." She replied, testily.

"Fair enough, but you've lived through a crisis. You both have. Don't you want someone to lean on sometimes?"

"And you expect that person to be you?"

"I wouldn't necessarily say that. But you don't see anyone else willing to be there, do you?"

"Look. The last few weeks have been hard. A lot harder than I expected. But it's nothing I'm unprepared to handle. I don't need anyone swooping into my life and sweeping away the hard stuff. I can do that for myself."

"That isn't my point." Murdoc insisted. "Sometimes, you just need to _trust_ someone else."

* * *

><p>"…Sometimes you just need to trust someone else." I looked up from my spinach pie, skeptically. I expected to see some approximation of an emotion that didn't quite exist in his face. What I saw instead actually shocked me. Sincerity. Real, honest sincerity hiding somewhere in those hollow eyes. I began to falter. Perhaps I had been wrong after all. I cast my eyes back down to my spinach pie and began to push bits of crust around my plate. Maybe this was what he was talking about, and maybe I did have to let my guard down sometime. But what was I going to find behind it?<p>

* * *

><p>Murdoc leaned his head back, tendrils of wild hair tickling his neck as he slowly made contact with the wall. It was such a dismal, dark little room. He thought back to the evening's events. Something about that girl… girl? Woman? What exactly would you call her? Something about her was maddening. He was never quite prepared for her face, it seemed, and that made it extraordinarily difficult to not give away the true feeling behind his carefully arranged expression . She was stubborn, he was certain of that. He didn't quite understand what was happening. It had been so easy to manipulate people before. He was not only a master of disguise, after all, but a master of persuasion. He could persuade just about anyone to believe anything. Indeed, he had played this role before, he thought pensively, shutting his eyes a moment. The pervasive red glow of darkroom bulbs, dim though they were, followed through his eyelids. He had played this role before, and gotten burned, quite literally.<p>

"Penny Parker." The words came as a shock out of the darkness, even as they burst from his lips. Penny Parker, that little twit, wherever she was, had been beautiful, and earnest, and yes, she had some sort of talent in there somewhere. And he had gotten quite tangled up in her. And, perhaps, if he had to be completely honest, (but when was he ever _completely_ honest?) it had hurt him. It wasn't supposed to be that way. She was supposed to be a pawn. A stupid, brainless pawn in a plot to get rid of MacGyver once and for all. What he hadn't counted on was her absolute, earnest sweetness. Whatever it was that had duped MacGyver into coming to her rescue over and over, letting her crash into his sphere more times than one could count, whatever that was had completely entangled Murdoc as well.

Well… not _completely._ He had still threatened to kill her after all, but it would have been an awful shame. Then again, things that beautiful and good didn't really deserve to exist anyway, when they only existed to the detriment of someone with true vision. Murdoc attempted to smooth back his unruly hair, the distant sound of trickling water periodically breaking into his train of thought. At length, he stood, approaching the long row of darkroom counters and fishing a pair of prints out of their rinse. He looked at them appraisingly. It was a wonder they had turned out at all, having been taken in such low light. He clipped these up to dry, and stepped out of his darkroom, flicking off the red light and squinting momentarily as the sun-filled room beyond dazzled.

What was past was past. This woman, Phoenix, had no part in any plot. At least not one that was still any of Murdoc's concern. She was just lovely, and he found he felt a distinct weakness in her presence. She would come around eventually. He was certain of it.

And if not… well, he supposed her sister wasn't going to be missed by too many others.


End file.
